PRACTICAL ARBORICULTURE 445 
GENERAL WILLIAM HENRY HARRISON. 
General William Henry Harrison was born at Berkely, on the James 
River, Virginia, twenty-five miles from Richmond, in 1773. 
He attended college at Hampton Sydney, and at age of seventeen began 
the study of medicine in Philadelphia, but the call for a campaign against 
the Indians of the west decided his destiny. General Washington gave him 
an ensign’s commission and he started for Fort Washington, now Cincinnati. 
At the age of twenty-four he became secretary of the northwestern terri- 
tory, and when Indiana was created a territory, Mr. Harrison was appointed 
its first governor, entering upon the duties at Vincennes, in 1801. 
General Harrison was closely identified with the early history of Indi- 
ana territory in its government and the Indian wars. 
In 1814 he resigned and retired to his farm at North Bend, Ohio, near 
Cincinnati. 
In 1839 General Harrison was nominated by the Whigs and elected Presi- 
dent of the United States, taking office March 4, 1841; but death claimed him 
after one month’s service as president. 
It is not to his service as a military commander, nor yet as a statesman 
in governing a territory or as president, that we specially direct attention, for these 
are well known to every American student, so much as to his interest in agri- 
culture and the forests of the Nation. While at Vincennes, in 1801, General 
Harrison discovered the value, durability and great importance of the Catalpa 
tree which was then so abundant on the banks of the Wabash River. He dis- 
tributed seeds and plants of the tree to many localities, urging the pioneers 
of Ohio and Indiana to plant it extensively. 
As early as 1814 General Harrison delivered an address before the Ham- 
ilton County, Ohio, agricultural society, in which he advocated the planting of 
the Catalpa tree, and called special attention to the numerous qualities of ex- 
cellence which the wood possessed. 
As the existence of several varieties of Catalpa was not known at that 
period, large numbers of trees were also planted in Hamilton County, from 
seed brought from the South, and seed again collected from these trees were 
distributed through Europe and America, which accounts for the vast num- 
bers of these inferior (bignonoides) trees found in every region of the globe. 
To General Harrison belongs the credit of discovering the Catalpa speciosc 
and bringing it to the attention of the world. 
